A decade later, Matthew Erman and Lisa Sterle revisit ‘Long Lost’

When husband-wife team Matthew Erman and Lisa Sterle created the comic series Long Lost together a decade back, their lives looked very different. The two were not yet parents, and neither had made the leap to full-time creator, with each carving out time for their respective crafts around the demands of 9-to-5 office existence. 

At the time, the couple had also not yet ironed out their creative dynamic, with artist Sterle describing the experience of revisiting Long Lost as being able to follow along as she and writer Erman “learn how to make comics together.”

“And I think that’s kind of charming,” continued Sterle, who will join Erman in celebrating the release of Long Lost: The Complete Collection (Vault Comics) at the Book Loft on Wednesday, Oct. 28. “Even looking at the art now, 10 years later, I’ve obviously improved a lot, and my art looks way different. But there were a lot of things I was doing specifically in this comic … that I’ve been returning to coincidentally in another comic. So, in a way, it feels like everything is coming full circle.”

Part of this revisiting, Sterle said, has also involved developing greater empathy for that younger version of herself, with the artist sharing how she could be overly self-critical in those earlier years, often at the expense of her self-esteem and her mental well-being. “Back then, it was so hard not to compare yourself to other people at the same stage in their careers who you saw as more successful,” she said. “And I felt like such an imposter at the time, such a novice. And looking back at this art 10 years later, I would have liked to have been kinder to myself. And I would have given myself more freedom to explore the things that were inherently me instead of trying to compare my work to someone else.”

The story of Long Lost centers on two estranged sisters who are drawn by supernatural forces back to their small southern town, its narrative rooted in part in the years that Erman lived in Kentucky following high school. “And I had that feeling of not belonging, of not really fitting into the puzzle that was that place,” he said. “I didn’t quite understand what I was doing or what I was there for, or how long I was going to be there. It was a really strange, lost period of my life where I was just kind of there.”

As a writer, Erman has long had an interest in interrogating the concept of place, his work often wrangling with those forces that send some fleeing from their hometowns and others compelled toward a return. Indeed, many of the ideas first surfaced in Long Lost take fuller flower in his graphic novel Loving, Ohio, from 2024, which finds him embracing the story in part as a means to unpack the love/hate relationship he then had for his home state.

“And I’ve had very similar experiences growing up in a place I don’t quite connect to,” said Sterle, who like Erman was born and raised outside of Dayton (Erman in Kettering and Sterke adjacent in Bellbrook). “And one thing that is interesting, if you look at Witchblood, the book we did right after Long Lost, one of the biggest [themes] in it is the idea of finding a place, finding a family. … I came here for college at CCAD and we found our place, found the people that make it home. And it’s why we’re still here 16 years later.”

While the reissue of Long Lost serves as essential documentation of the couple’s respective artistic evolutions, its pages are also imprinted with the ghosts of those early relationship years – the butting of heads, the moments of endearment, and the vulnerable give and take of negotiations that allowed space for each to grow and evolve alongside one another. 

“It’s a testament to our ability to collaborate,” Erman said.

“And to problem solve and communicate,” Sterle said, picking up the thread (a common theme as the two ping-ponged back and forth throughout our conversation, at times finishing one another’s sentences). “Because you can’t have a good collaborative relationship if you can’t trust one another and say what you’re really thinking.”

“it’s honestly kind of a miracle we never really had any creative crisis,” Erman said.

“And even if there was an idea or an ask that one of us didn’t like, we always found a way to get to a place where we were both happy with it,” Sterle said.

“I feel like this book tested us, in a way, and not in a sense that there were tests put in front of us,” Erman said. “But on a meta level, this is the foundation for our marriage. … This is where we came together as creators and people.”